Hey GREATNESS,
Have you ever made the statement, “I am not where I want to be, but I am not where I used to be?” I have made this statement so many times until I was asked by my life coach Dr. Connie Stewart in 2015, this question: Where do you see yourself in a year?
I was hoping she would have said five years, not one year.
I knew I could give her the quick answer like; I want to become an author and a life coach that would change women’s lives, but most of all I want to become a better me.
Why?
Because I knew I had more time to reach those goals in five years vs one year. She also wanted to know why I couldn’t complete those goals in a year vs five years.
When I say I was fearful of this statement because I knew it was going to take work to complete my goal in a year. In the meeting my adrenaline was high and I wanted to run out of the room and say NO I can’t do this in a year. I am afraid of what people will say and what if I fail at being a life coach and an author.
Remind you the book was completed and I just needed to send it to the editor.
I was just fearful and doubtful.
I never understood why this word FEAR would cost us to become complacent and comfortable with just living in our now. What is FEAR?
F= False
E= Evidence
A= Appearing
R= Real
Yes, FEAR is just False evidence that appears real and we can allow this false evidence to snatch our greatness away. Yes, we can allow fear to cost us our greatness. When we start to believe that FEAR is our fuel and not our enemy we will not be able to reach our greatness. What is your greatness? Making decisions to EVICT Fear out of our conversation, our minds, and our decisions making, we can then believe God’s plan for our lives.
After that coaching session with Dr. Connie Stewart, I left that meeting making my fears of what was next in my life my fuel. I did more in that year of 2016 than I had ever done in my life. I became an author, life coach and was on my way to finding my place in the land, while I am still on top of the earth. Please don’t get me wrong I still deal with FEAR, but I allow it to become my Fuel to life.
In 2019 my family was sitting in my living room eating Thanksgiving dinner with my father and he was talking about our family moving to our hometown. I told them there is no way in this world that I would move to the country and build a home there.
Why?
At first, it was because I have always said I would never move back to my hometown and I knew I told a lot of people that I would not move home. So of course I worried about people and what people would say about us moving back home.
Secondly, I was afraid that we could not and would not afford or be able to build a home. I allowed fear to grab me by the neck yet again because it was something that was unfamiliar, uncomfortable, and unknown to me and the people around me. I started to become friends with Fear, I was sleeping with it, I was allowing it to take residence in my conversation and in my mind.
God had to remind me of that day I left Dr. C coaching session and how my life since that day has been barely recognizable. I have been living my dream of being an author, life coach that mentors women around the world and all the ministries that I have started since that session. I have had the opportunity to not only see the members in our church life change, but I have seen women turn into the spiritual butterfly that they were always designed to be, but God used my experience to remind them that God has no respect of person that he is a God that can change you, but it’s a choice that you as an individual have to make.
God reminded me of that meeting with DR. C, by letting me know: you have to get your FUEL back and in 2016 you made a decision to walk in your greatness, and now because this dream seems bigger than you, you can’t trust me with this greatness. As I learned from her; Greatness will become easy when you divorce just being good.
Meaning, yes I am not where I want to be, but I am not where I used to be, but I am striving to get where God called me to be while here on earth. by doing my greatness Meaning doing is action and striving to do my greatest for my greatness. In other words in the words of my husband Bishop Harden, “If better is achievable than Good is not good enough”.
So my goal is to leave a legacy for my children and those that I pour into. As Peter Strople states: Legacy is not leaving something for people, It’s leaving something in people. So that means some great moments will cause us to walk blind, but we will feel greatness all around us.
Come here, what is greatness in my definition John 4:4 greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. My sister, you walk around with GREATNESS on the inside of you. You are designed for GREATER and you (we) are designed to show people that they have GREATNESS in them.
So, my sisters, we are in the sixth month of this year aka MY Birthday Month… you know I had to do it lol….
No, seriously you have six more months to start something. What are you going to do for the rest of this year? I come this morning to disrupt your morning and agitate your routine of living in FEAR and not living in your greatness. I came this morning to remind you, we all have the same amount of hours in the day and we both have an opportunity to reprogram our minds for greatness.
How do we do that? So glad you asked. We become someone we have never been, we have to say things we have never said to ourselves, we go places we have never been and do things that we have never done.
First, we must be honest with ourselves by admitting that we have been playing it safe and not living out our best life. When we can admit that we are not living our best life, then and only then we can walk in boldness and allow that God-fidence (as my spiritual daughter Lady Johnson says)… to stand up in us and trust his process.
We do that by becoming committed and consistent with our greatness. You get to redesign your life and you get an opportunity to re-write your story starting TODAY. I decided that day with DR. C that I would re-write my story and allow God to approve the story by trusting him.
I thought I was mastering fear until my dad made his statement at the Thanksgiving table in 2019. This FEAR was starting to overtake me because it was not only unfamiliar, but this could affect my entire family and my girl’s life would be changed forever.
I was allowing this FEAR to send me into panic attacks that felt like it was choking the life out of me only because I would not trust God. I allowed the FEAR to become my enemy yet again. Meaning, yes you will have moments, but you have to remember that we must evict FEAR daily. I allowed FEAR to sit there for a moment, but I learned the Power of Trusting God and allowing my FEAR this time to Fuel my FAITH.
I feel like paul as I am writing this letter this morning to remind you Don’t allow FEAR to put you in prison, but allow FEAR to be your FUEL, but if you are a dreamer like me and if your dreams scare you which my sister it should, you have to allow your FEAR to become your Fuel for FAITH.
Faith is the substance of things, hope for and the evidence of things not seen (Heb:11:1-6). When you can’t see it, but for some reason, you believe it’s going to happen for you and you don’t understand how it’s going to happen, but you just know that you know it’s going to happen. My sister, I just came to remind you, when it starts to happen you may become fearful, but allow this FEAR to Fuel your faith. I decided after that meeting with my dad to allow my FEAR to Fuel my FAITH even if I can’t see it. Lord, I BELIEVE IT. Not that he had to prove himself again, but he did.
Lastly, in 2020 God showed me what will happen if you allow Fear to Fuel your Faith, but most of all he was so Faithful to me and my family. I can’t wait to share with you all that he is doing with me, my family, and most of all with the ministers that he has given me to empower women like yourself, my goal is always to get women to see themselves through God’s eyes, not people.
Get ready to receive an email from me more this month because not only am I celebrating my birthday, but I will be sharing with you things that God has given me to empower, encourage, and equip women to see how they are a product of God’s grace.
I have so many things that I have planned for this month and for the next six months that are designed just for women like yourself. First I will start by sharing my journey of building my home and showing you how we as a family (My husband and my girls) had to look at FEAR and allow it to Fuel our Faith.
Please know my heart I will one day share the horror stories about how it was painful, how I cried many days, how we as a family knew we had to downsize and how we were criticized, talked about, and much more, but we had to let FEAR and doubt Fuel our faith as a family.
And now as I sit in my new office in my new home, with tears in my eyes I promised God that I would share my journey if he would make us his miracle as a family. But, when I say it was not easy and when I tell you your dream is not going to be easy, but my sister every tear, trail, turbulence, and every person that talks about you will be so worth it.
My sister DON’T you DARE STOP but allow your FEAR to Fuel you and if you dream bigger let your FEAR FUEL your FAITH!!! SEE IT, BELIEVE IT and BE IT
Stay blessed in all that you do,
Your sister in Christ
Tonya Harden
Click the link to see our journey Part 1 of our journey and subscribe to my YouTube page to see Part 2 tomorrow morning at 9 am CST.
No editor for these blogs just my heart. So please excuse my typos (lol)
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